The holiday season is here. As business slows down, it’s the perfect time to implement some creative Christmas real estate marketing ideas to jump-start your 2024. From social media campaigns to networking events to postcards, I’ve got you covered. You can even combine several of these ideas to build additional momentum.
But I didn’t stop there. I want to spread the feeling of the season, so I created some fully customizable door hanger templates and real estate Christmas cards in Canva for you to use in your joy-filled marketing cheer.
Download Your Holiday Canva Card Templates
17 Christmas Real Estate Ideas to Get More Clients
1. Hand Out Turkeys, Hams, or Pies
These are great gifts for past clients. For every home you closed this year, purchase a ham or turkey and hand-deliver it to each client. Dress it up with a nice Christmas card, and don’t forget to schedule some extra time to chit-chat when you deliver these gifts because your people will definitely want to visit for a bit when you show up with this gift.
With inflation pushing grocery prices through the roof, this year is an especially great time to arrive with a ham or turkey. Your gift—providing the central part of a special family dinner—will seem especially thoughtful.
If dessert is more your thing, try delivering pies to your people instead. But don’t skimp and have it delivered—the secret to this gift is the personal delivery. You’ll instantly shoot to the top of everyone’s minds through the rest of the year when they see your smiling face in their doorway.
2. Holiday Tour of Homes
Put together a small tour of homes—decorated for the season—that you can hold open for a tour. This is particularly lovely when you do it in the early evening when the Christmas lights are on. It’s practically magical. You don’t need a lot of homes for this (around three works well), and you can hold each home open just like you would for a broker tour or caravan. Start in one of the homes and have everyone go together from house to house. Or you can even have a different agent set up in each house and have folks pop by as they wish.
Serve some hors d’oeuvres and mulled wine to keep everyone warm and happy. Print out a brochure featuring all the homes on the tour. This works well with an open house as well. But a small tour of homes from the same brokerage pushes that credibility factor through the chimney.
Promote your tour on all your social media channels easily with Agent Crate. They offer hundreds of stunning, easy-to-edit templates for everything from door hangers to social media posts to email templates.
3. Adopt a Family for Christmas
The holidays are a great time to help those less fortunate. Work with a local church organization, The Salvation Army, or a veterans’ organization to support a family in need. Ask your sphere to help contribute with toys, non-perishable foods, or funds.
Promote your adopt-a-family drive through all channels—social media, postcards to your farm and past clients, phone calls, and even door-knocking. You can do a lot of good in your community while making connections.
A cool way to promote your drive is to create a website or page that shares information, provides a list of what’s needed most, gives directions on how to connect with you, and includes a lead capture feature that allows you to continue reaching out to them after the event concludes. Canva now has single-use landing pages and website templates available that would work well for this.
4. Sponsor a Toy Drive
Similar to adopting a family, you can reach out to your entire community with a toy drive, asking for gift donations for families and children in need. You can work with a church organization, Toys for Tots, or local women’s shelter.
Promote your toy drive to your community through social media, postcards, door hangers, and reaching out to your sphere. You can even go on local radio, television shows, or podcasts to talk about your toy drive. Show up to your monthly chamber of commerce meeting and let everyone in your community know about it.
5. Send Recipe Postcards
I love sending out postcards to my farm sharing something useful, like a fun seasonal recipe. That way, it’s less likely to end up in the circular file. I found these postcards on Zazzle with one of my favorite recipes already printed on them.
You’ll find preprinted recipes for desserts, side dishes, and additional cocktail options that are sure to fit your personality across a multitude of design and printing sites. Look for something that fits who you are and share it with your farm, past clients, and even some favorite vendors in your community.
If you need some additional inspo for holiday postcards, or for any time of the year, we’ve got you! Check out this article I wrote on the top 23 lead generating postcard templates to get your creative juices flowing.
Top 23 Real Estate Postcard Templates That Actually Generate Leads (+ Design Guide)
6. Send Out Christmas Cards to Past Clients
It’s a shame that so few people still send out Christmas cards. But think of how much you’ll stand out when your handwritten Christmas cards arrive. Spend a little time writing a few each day instead of trying to do them all at once and it’ll feel much easier. And when your people receive your beautiful card with your handwritten thoughts inside, you’ll make a major impression that will last well into the new year.
7. Host a Holiday Party With Vendors
This one takes a little planning but it’s well worth the effort. Organize a Christmas party for a couple hundred people. You should make this a team or brokerage event where all agents invite their past and current clients, favorite vendors, sphere, and family members.
Get sponsors for the event to cover the costs of the venue, food, cocktails, and plenty of prizes to give away. Send out invitations and include the sponsors’ logos. In this relaxed and fun atmosphere, you don’t have to be a pushy salesperson. Just have conversations with as many people as you can and enjoy the merriment.
8. Holiday Door Hangers
You can easily take a few afternoons and hit up your farm area with some festive door hangers. They act like real estate Christmas cards and remind everyone that you’re the real estate professional who knows their neighborhood. Not to mention how much you can save on postage.
And I’ve made this one easy for you. I created some stunning Christmas door hangers that you can customize in Canva. You can find them in the download above. But act fast to ensure you have enough time to print them before the season ends.
9. Throw Your Buyers a Holiday Housewarming & Invite New Neighbors
Just sold a house? Throw your buyers a housewarming party! Create some festive door hanger invitations that you can take to the neighbors. Tell them they have a new neighbor and you’re throwing a housewarming party. Be sure to include the date and time to attend.
Make sure your buyers feel comfortable with the idea first, of course. You might need to give them a week or so to get in the house before the housewarming party so they can organize and unpack. Once you’ve nailed down the date, gather the food, drinks, and anything else you need to make this party successful.
Do some door-knocking a day or two before to reinforce the invitation. Take a few extra door hangers along with you just in case anyone says they didn’t get their invite. Let everyone in the neighborhood know about the party.
When it’s time for the event, have everyone sign a guest list so your clients can remember all the new neighbors they met and you can follow up with each of them with a nice thank-you card. During the party, have a lot of conversations with the guests.
10. Host a Christmas Market With Local Vendors
When I lived in Germany, I always looked forward to the vendor markets around Christmas time. Every year, so many gifted, crafty people created beautiful things. There was plenty of great food, ornaments, art, and household items that made great gifts.
You can start a tradition in your community by organizing an annual Christmas market. Invite vendors to participate in this event where they sign up (for a small fee, if necessary) to reserve a spot with a table to sell their wares. You might be able to find local vendors on Facebook Marketplace that would like to participate in a live event.
Make sure you have your own booth or table at the event. You can couple other marketing ideas, like your adopt-a-family or toy drive, and some fun giveaways at your booth. But don’t forget to have a stack of business cards to hand out to people after you have all those conversations at your event.
11. Host a Charity Fundraising Event
Here’s another idea you can use at a vendor event like the Christmas market—sell baked goods as a fundraiser for a charity. Have your agents bake some muffins, cookies, cake, candies, or anything festive. Get some gorgeous packaging to make these baked goods look extra beautiful and print up some cards that introduce the charity you’re raising money for.
Be sure to promote your fundraiser to all your marketing channels, letting your people know the cause or charity you’re raising money for. Pairing this event with a vendor market or even your holiday tour of homes will give you a talking point to start a conversation with just about anyone.
12. Host a Christmas Meal for Charity
This could be a really fun way to make a positive impact on your community. You can do this by working with a local restaurant (for a nominal fee) or by having other people prepare dishes. The way it works is you promote a holiday feast and invite everyone in your community to join for a free holiday meal. Serve by the plate or make it buffet-style—that’s completely up to you. The food is free to everyone with a suggested donation to the charity you’re raising money for.
It’s a lovely way to promote community, enjoy a wonderful holiday meal, make connections to people in your area, and raise money for a charity you support. You can follow up with an announcement of how much money you raised.
13. Join a Christmas Parade
If your town organizes an annual holiday parade, make sure not to miss it. You don’t have to put together a float. You can prepare some marketing materials, like your real estate Christmas cards, and hand them out while walking in the parade. It’s an easy way to get out in front of people, smile, and spread goodwill in your community.
14. Send a Slydial Christmas Voice Message
A great way to put an instant smile on anyone’s face is to leave them a Christmas voicemail message. And you can pair this marketing strategy with any of the previously mentioned methods. You can use it to promote your other marketing events. Invite people to the holiday party you’re hosting or encourage them to donate to your toy drive. Don’t forget to wish them joy this holiday season.
Slydial allows you to record one message and send it out to your entire list simultaneously. So, not only does it spread Christmas cheer, but it also saves you tons of time.
15. BombBomb Video Christmas Message
Take your Christmas wishes up a notch with a video message instead. Use a service like BombBomb to send a prerecorded video out to your entire network all at once. A video takes your holiday message to the next level, making your message personal, warm, and extra special. Be sure to let your people know about your other events in your video.
16. Cookie Exchange Party With Clients & Past Clients
Who doesn’t love a good cookie exchange party? You get to meet up with friends and walk away with tons of different cookies you didn’t have to bake yourself. Invite your friends, family, past clients, and even your vendors, and have everyone bring at least a dozen cookies.
Each person will empty their cookies onto platters you’ll have laid out. Then, they will turn around and fill their container with an assortment of one dozen cookies chosen from all the varieties available. While everyone is clambering over the crazy cookie selection, you’ll have plenty of face time to make those connections, start conversations, and remind everyone that you’re the neighborhood real estate pro.
17. Create a Holiday Display Guide for Your Community
This is a needed guide every year. People love to see Christmas light displays but may not know how to find the best ones. Showing that you know where they all are is a subtle cue that you’re the neighborhood expert.
You can put together a Christmas display guide and send it out to your network. Email it to your existing database. Then post it in your social media channels as a free download (don’t forget to ask for their email address so you can send it to them). You can add those people to your database and keep in touch with them throughout the year.
Your Take
We at The Close love the holiday season and the many opportunities to connect with new people and reconnect with those we haven’t seen in a while. We all get busy throughout the year, and it’s a challenge to stay in touch with everyone. The holidays give us a chance to slow down, laugh, and enjoy this special time of the year.
I hope these Christmas real estate marketing ideas encourage and inspire you to look for ways to get out into your community, be seen, start authentic conversations, and see where they take you. Get excited for the coming year and all that awaits you. Real estate is nothing if not an adventure, and I’m excited to see what 2024 brings.
Do you want to share a fabulous Christmas real estate marketing idea? I would love to hear your creative strategies. Add some joy to the comments below.
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